James Clark "Jimmie" Johnnie

James Clark "Jimmie" Johnnie

Jimmie Johnnie was born in Ketchikan on March 23, 1896.  He was Naax.adi, Raven Beaver of the Beaver/Halibut House according to the Sitka Sentinel, 3 Aug 2012.  He was the husband of Lily Houston.  He was widowed in 1967.

He was a member of the ANB and a fisherman who owned his own boat.  Dr. Walter Soboleff thought James Johnnie was a “real he-man”.  From the Sitka Sentinel, Friday, January 08, 2016:  “Not too long before his passing, Dr. Walter Soboleff said, ‘A few years ago it took real he- men to work on a seine boat.’ When attending college, Soboleff fished each summer on the Sitka seiner Eagle. His crewmates were Andrew Hope, Joe Truitt and boat owners Ray and Johnnie James. Soboleff was the cook. In Soboleff’’s time, there was no motorized power troller, no Canadian Hook and no Power Block. Two- way radios were unheard of and there was no power skiff. The lucky skiff man had to use oars to get skiff movement. These conditions existed right up to the early 1940s.”

James Johnnie died in August, 1974.

Some of the above is from Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian genealogy of Canada and Alaska, https://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=klea&id=I22789